NIGERIAN IMMIGRATION SERVICE MURDERED INNOCENT NIGERIANS AND REFUSED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY Moro, Others Must Be Brought To Justice –Aborisade The deaths of job applicants during the recent money-swindling and murderous recruitment exercise by the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) have further demonstrated the stark reality of the failed state status of Nigeria as a nation. A failed state is one whose central government is characterised by the following features, among others: Sharp economic decline, including massive unemployment, widespread inequality, extensive corruption, state illegitimacy, loss of physical control over much of its territory, loss of a monopoly of the legitimate use of force, widespread criminality and insecurity, inability to provide reasonable public services, prevalence of phenomena of refugees and involuntary movement of population, widespread group grievance, uneven development, brain-drain and environmental decay. During the period 2004 – 2010, the country experienced sustained high growth rates, but without commensurate rises in employment. The structure of employment remained basically the same during the period with agricultural self-employment continued to dominate the country’s labour market. The most noteworthy employment development was the expansion of jobs in the communication sector as a direct consequence of the deregulation of the sector. Unfortunately, the measures designed infrastructo tackle the plague of unemployment fall short of the monstrous dimension, which unemployment and the accompanying pervasive insecurity and dare devil criminality have attained. The government appears contented with creating jobs, which involve re-charge card selling, job creation by gambling in the name of You Win, graduate street cleaners, graduate road traffic officers, vocational training of a few hands, and so on. What the disturbing degree of unemployment requires today is direct investment by the state and preparedness to fight corruption, head-on. The measures articulated or disarticulated in the Transformation Agenda does not show government is committed to positive reform not to talk of commitment to a transformation agenda, which is radical in nature. At the backdrop of the deaths and agony witnessed in the NIS recruitment, Nigerians must pose fundamental demands. The death of between 16 and 21 persons at the recruitment exercise of the NIS on March 15 is a mirror of the calamitous magnitude of the unemployment problem in the country. About one million youths struggled to have a space to take a test for only 4000 job openings. Rather than paying N4 million per month to each of the participants at the National Conference, government should use such resources to establish public enterprises and create jobs while groups sending representatives are made to cater for the needs of their representatives at the conference. Rather than suspending the Central Bank Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi posifor crying out that $20 billion is missing, government should bring to justice those who have stolen the $20 billion job creating ventures. For Nigeria to move forward, delegates at the National Conference should advocate that it should be legislated that it is a crime for government not to provide jobs as a fundamental right. For the right to life under the constitution to be meaningful, the right to job must be given the status of a fundamental right. The Minister of the Interior, Aba Moro and any other policy-making officials involved in the money-swindling and murderous recruitment exercise should not only be relieved of their political appointments, they must also be prosecuted and brought to justice. Apart from demanding that the Minister of the Interior, Abba Moro and other officials involved in the money-swindling and murderous recruitment exercise must be sacked from their positions, we also demand that privatisation of public enterprises must be reversed and governments at all levels must establish more public enterprises where the teeming army of the unemployed may be employed. In addition, government must implement Section 16(2)(d) of the 1999 Constitution which provides that governments must provide jobs or give unemployment allowance. New Telegraph.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:38:21 +0000
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